Museum And Gallery

Damián Ortega rides into the ICA At the 2003 Venice Biennale, Damián Ortega presented what has become his signature sculpture, Cosmic Thing . He dissected a 1989 Volkswagen Beetle and suspended the individual parts in mid air so that they resemble a 3-D assembly diagram.

Museums and galleries gather their objets d'art The art of 2000 BC Egypt, visions from the Iraq War and AIDS activism, and the magic of a digital technology and Harry Potter make up the highlights of Boston's autumn art calendar.

Félix Candela's curves, Walter Gropius's boxes Looking at the wavy roofs of Félix Candela's most iconic structures, like the restaurant Los Manatiales (1958) in Mexico City, I think of pinwheels or the fluttering dress of a spinning dancer.

Painter, printmaker, teacher, art historian, curator, political/social/arts activist, Red Sox and Celtics fan "He was so alive ," a friend wrote to me a few days after Michael Mazur died, on August 18.

New visions at the BCA and the ICA Nature is mysterious and mystical in "And the fair Moon rejoices" (at the BCA's Mills Gallery through August 16), as foreign as the wilds of New England probably seemed to its first English settlers. And maybe there are witches about.

Music inspires art at the MFA, Panopticon, and the Gardner The centerpiece of the Museum of Fine Arts' "Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs" is Candice Breitz's 2005 Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), a wall of 30 televisions, each showing a different Madonna fan singing a cappella to her 1990 greatest-hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. They wear headphones, bob their heads, sing aloud to music we can't hear.

Anne Siems and the folk revival Anne Siems's paintings are time machines teleporting you back to the early days of our American republic. In her show at Walker Contemporary, the German-born, Seattle-based artist channels the endearing awkwardness of artists like John Brewster Jr., who roamed NE at the start of the 19th century painting portraits.

The golden age of Dutch sea power sails into Salem The Dutch emerged at the dawn of the 17th century as a pre-eminent military and commercial power on the sea. They were in the midst of throwing off Spanish rule and developing a shipping empire that would reach from the Americas to South Africa to Asia.

From the Old West to middle-class guys The legend of the Old West's cowboys and Indians, flinty pioneers and buffalo killers, sheriffs and gunslingers started with the tall tales that cowboys themselves told of their glorious exploits.

Paul Heyer and Anna Schachte at Proof, Langdon Graves and Alex de Corte at LaMontagne Break out your hottest moves — a forthcoming exhibition in South Boston asserts that the path to abstraction could go through dancing.

New England museums worth traveling for In New England, where you can't swing a sack of cranberries without hitting a venerable cultural institution, anyone with access to a car (or even a subway pass) can scope out these topnotch art museums.